If ye place your hopes upon creatures, ye depend upon winds, and waves, and precarious seasons: upon the treachery, iniquity, and inconstancy, of men: or, to say all in one word, ye depend upon death. That poor man is a self-deceiver, who, like the man in the gospel, saith within himself, "My soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years: take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry," Luke xii. 17. 19. But, I expect to find him, yes, I expect to find him, at the sound of that voice, which may this very night require his soul, I expect to find him in a sick bed. There, all pale, distorted, and dying, let him assemble his gods; let him call for his treasures, and send for his domestics, and acquaintances; in that fatal bed let him embrace his Drusillas and Dalilahs; let him form harmonious concerts, amuse himself with fashionable diverisions, or feast his eyes with gaudy decorations, the vacuity and vanity of which, in spite of himself, he will be obliged to discover.

descends to charge himself with your happi- The text that we have read to you, my ness. The happiness which ye feel in com- brethren, and which, though very short, hath munion with him, is intended to engage you doubtless already excited many grand ideas in to him; and the noblest homage that ye can your minds, is a homage which the prophet Jereturn, the purest incense that ye can offer, is remiah paid to the perfections of God, when to say to him, "Whom have I in heaven but they seemed to counteract one another. To thee? there is none upon earth I desire besides make this plain to you, we will endeavour to thee. It is good for me to draw near to God," fix your attention on the circumstances in Ps. lxxiii. 25. 28. which our prophet was placed, when he pronounced the words. This is the best method of explaining the text, and with this we begin. Jeremiah was actually a martyr to his ministry, when he addressed that prayer to God, of which this text is only a part. He was reduced to the disagreeable necessity of not being able to avail himself of the rites of religion, without invalidating the maxims of civil government. This is one of the most difficult straits, into which the ministers of the living God can be brought; for, however they may be opposed, people always regard them, if not with entire submission, yet with some degree of respect, while they confine themselves to the duties of their own office, and while, content with the speaking of heavenly things, they leave the reins of government in the hands of those to whom Providence has committed them. But when religion and civil policy are so united that ministers cannot discharge their functions without becoming, in a manner, ministers of state, without determining whether it be proper to make peace or to declare war, to enter into alliances or to dissolve them: how extremely delicate and difficult does their ministry become! This was our prophet's case. Jerusalem had been besieged for the space of one year by Nebuchadnezzar's army, and it was doubtful whether the city should capitulate with that prince, or hold out against him. God himself decided this question, by the ministry of the prophet, and commanded him in his name, to address the Israelites: "Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it. And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans; but shall surely be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon though ye fight with the Chaldeans, ye shall not prosper," ver. 3-5.

0 give me more solid foundations for my hopes! May I never build my house upon the sand, endangered by every wind and wave; may the edifice of my felicity be superior to human vicissitudes, and "like mount Sion, which cannot be removed," Ps. cxxv. 1; may I build upon the rock of ages, and be able in public calamities and in my private misfortunes, above all, in the agonies of death to appropriate those precious promises which God hath made to his church in general, and to every individual in it: "The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed," Isa. liv. 10.

To this God, of whose grandeur we form such elevated notions, and upon whose promises we found such exalted hopes, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

A prediction so alarming was not uttered with impunity: Jeremiah was thrown into prison for pronouncing it: but before he could well reflect on this trial, he was exercised with another that was more painful still. God comWIS-manded him to transact an affair, which seems OF at first sight more likely to sink his ministry

JEREMIAH Xxxii. 19. Great in counsel, and mighty in work. THESE words are connected with the two preceding verses: "Ah, Lord God, behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. Thou showest loving-kindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the great, the mighty God, the Lord of hosts is his name, great in counsel, and mighty in work."

into contempt, than to conciliate people's esteem to it. He commanded him to avail himself of the right, which every Israelite enjoyed, when his nearest relation offered an estate to sale: a right founded upon an institute recorded in Leviticus. God required the Israelites to consider him as their sovereign, and his sovereignty over them was absolute, Lev. xxv. They cannot be said to have possessed any thing as proper owners; they held every thing conditionally, and in trust; and they had no other right in their patrimonial estates than what they derived from the arbitrary will of God. In order to preserve in them a sense of this dependence, they were forbidden to sell

and

the lands which they inherited from their an- | beast, it is given into the hand of the Chalcestors: "The lands shall not be sold for ever deans. Men shall buy fields for money, (saith the Levitical law,) for the land is mine, subscribe evidences," ver. 42-44. and ye are strangers and sojourners with me," This was not unknown to the heathens, for Diodorus of Sicily says, that "the Jews could not sell their inheritances."*

ver. 23.

Jeremiah entered into these views, obeyed the command, and believed the promise: but, to fortify himself against such doubts as the distance of its accomplishment might perhaps produce in his mind, he recollected the eminent perfections, and the magnificent works, of him from whom the promise came. "Now when I had delivered the evidence of the purchase unto Baruch (says the prophet,) I prayed unto the Lord, saying, Ah! Lord God, behold thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. Thou art the great, the mighty God, the Lord of hosts is thy name, great in counsel, and mighty in work."

But as it might happen that a landholder might become indigent, and be reduced by this prohibition to the danger of dying with hunger, even while he had enough to supply all his wants, God had provided, that, in such a case, the lands might be sold under certain restrictions, which were proper to convince the seller of that sovereignty, from which he would never depart. The principle of those restrictions were two; one, that the estate should be rather mortgaged than sold, and, at the jubilee, should return to its first master; and hence it is, that to sell an estate for ever, in the style of the Jewish jurisprudence, is to mortgage it till the jubilee. The other restriction was, that the nearest relation of him who was obliged to sell his land, should have the right of purchasing it before any others, either more distant re-cessary to re-establish the Jewish exiles in lations or strangers.

In virtue of this law, Jeremiah had a right to purchase an estate, which Hanameel, the son of Shallum, had offered to sale. The land lay at Anathoth, a town in the tribe of Benjamin, where our prophet was born, and was actually occupied by the Chaldeans at that time. Jerusalem was besieged, and Jeremiah was fully persuaded, and even foretold that it would be taken; that the Jews would be carried away into captivity; and would not be re-established in their own country till their return from Babylon at the expiration of seventy years. What a time to purchase an estate! What a season to improve a right of redemption!

But this command of God to the prophet was full of meaning; God gave it with views similar to, but incomparably surer than, those which the Romans had, when they publicly offered to sell the land where Hannibal was encamped when he was besieging the city of Rome. What the prophet was commanded to do, was designed to be an image of what the Jews should have the liberty of doing after their re-establishment. Ye may ascertain that this was the design of the command given to Jeremiah, if ye attend to the words which he addressed to God himself, in the twenty-fourth verse of this chapter: "Behold the mounts, the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans: and thou hast said unto me, O Lord God, buy thee the field for money," ver. 25. 27. To this the Lord answers, "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh, is there any thing too hard for me? Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate without man or

*The case of the daughters of Zelophehad, related in Numbers xxvii. 8, procured a general law of inheritance. If a man died without a son, his daughters were to inherit: if without children, his brethren were to inherit: if without brethren, his uncle was to inherit: if without uncle, his nearest relation was his heir. Grotius says that this law, which preferred an uncle before a nephew, passed from the Jews to the Phoenicians, and from the Phoenicians into all Africa. Saurin. Dissert. Tom. II. Disc. vii.

The considering of the circumstances that attended the text, is a sufficient determination of its end and design. The prophet's meaning, which is quite clear, is, that the wisdom of God perfectly comprehended all that would be ne

their own land; and that his power could effect it. The words are, however, capable of a nobler and more extensive meaning, and in this larger view we intend to consider them. God is "great in counsel," either, as the words may be translated, "great in designing, and mighty in executing:" or, as the same phrase is rendered in Isaiah, "wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working," xxviii. 29. We will endeavour to give you a just notion of this sublime subject in two different views.

I. We will consider the subject speculatively. II. We will consider it in a practical light. We intend by considering the subject speculatively, to evince the truth of the subject, the demonstration of which is very important to us. By considering it practically, we intend to convince you on the one hand, of the monstrous extravagance of those men, those little rays of intelligence, who, according to the wise man, pretend to set their "wisdom and counsel against the Lord," Prov. xxi. 30; and on the other, of the wisdom of those, who, while they regulate their conduct by his laws alone, commit their peace, their life, and their salvation, to the care of his Providence. This is what I propose to lay before you.

I. "O Lord, thou art great in counsel, and mighty in work." Let us consider this proposition speculatively. I shall establish it on two kinds of proofs. The first shall be taken from the nature of God: the second from the history of the world, or rather from the history of the church.

1. My first proofs shall be taken from the nature of God; not that it belongs to a preacher to go very deeply into so profound a subject, nor to his auditors to follow all the reflections that he could make: yet we wish, when we speak of the Supreme Being, that we might not be always obliged to speak superficially, under pretence that we always speak to plain people. We wish ye had sometimes the laudable ambition, especially when ye assist in this sacred place, of elevating your minds to those sublime objects, of the meditation of which, the occupations, to which your frailties

and miseries, or, shall I rather say, your vitiat- | separate the finer from the coarser parts, mix

ed tastes, enslave you, ye are deprived in the ordinary course of your lives.

M

The nature of God proves that he is "great in counsel." Consider the perfect knowledge that he has of all possible beings, as well as of all the beings which do actually exist. We are not only incapable of thoroughly understanding the knowledge that he has of possible beings; but we are even incapable of forming any idea of it. I am not sure that the reduction of all the objects of our knowledge to two ideas is founded in reason. I do not know whether we be not guilty of some degree of temerity in comprising all real existences in two classes: a class of bodies, and a class of spirits. I leave this question to philosophers; but I maintain, that it argues the highest presumption to affirm, even allowing that every being within our knowledge is either body or spirit, that every thing must be reducible to one of these classes, that not only all real existence, but even all possible existence, must necessarily be either body or spirit. I wonder how human capacities, contracted as they are within limits so narrow, dare be so bold as to prescribe bounds to their Creator, and to restrain his intelligence within their own sphere. If it were allowable to advance any thing upon the most abstract subject that can be proposed, I would venture to say that it is highly probable, that the same depth of divine intelligence, which conceived the ideas of body and spirit, conceives other ideas without end: it is highly probable, that possibility (if I may be allowed to say so,) has no other bounds than the infinite knowledge of the Supreme Being. What an unfathomable depth of meditation, my brethren! to glance at it is to confound one's self. What would our perplexity be if we should attempt to enter it? The knowledge of all possible beings, diversified without end by the same intelligence that imagines them: what designs, or, as our prophet expresses himself, what "greatness of counsel," does it afford the Supreme Being!

But let us not lose ourselves in the world of possible beings; let us confine our attention to real existences: I am willing even to reduce them to the two classes, which are just now mentioned. Let each of you imagine, my brethren, as far as his ability can reach, how great the counsel of an intelligence must be, who perfectly knows all that can result from the various arrangements of matter, and from the different modifications of mind.

What greatness of counsels must there be in an intelligence, who perfectly knows all that can result from the various arrangements of matter? What is matter? What is body? It is a being divisible into parts, which parts may be variously arranged without end, and from which as many different bodies may arise, as there can be diversities in the arrangement of their parts. Let us proceed from small things to great. Put a grain of wheat to a little earth, warm that earth with the rays of the sun, and the grain of wheat will become an ear laden with a great many grains like that which produces them. Give the parts of these grains an arrangement different from that which they had in the ear, VOL. I.-10

a few drops of water with the former, and ye will procure a paste: produce a small alteration of the parts of this paste, and it will become bread: let the bread be bruised with the teeth, and it will become flesh, bone, blood, and so on. The same reasoning, that we have applied to a grain of wheat, may be applied to a piece of gold, or a bit of clay, and we know what a multitude of arts in society have been produced by the knowledge which mankind have obtained of the different arrangements of which matter is capable.

But mankind can perceive only one point of matter; a point placed between too infinites; an infinitely great, and an infinitely small. Two sorts of bodies exist besides those that are the objects of our senses, one sort is infinitely great, the other infinitely small. Those enormous masses of matter, of which we have only a glimpse, are bodies infinitely great, such as the sun, the stars, and an endless number of worlds in the immensity of space, to us indeed imperceptible, but the existence of which, however, we are obliged to allow. Bodies infinitely small are those minute particles of matter, which are too fine and subtle to be subject to our experiments, and seem to us to have no solidity, only because our senses are too gross to discover them, but which lodge an infinite number of organized beings.

Having laid down these indisputable data, let us see what may be argued from them. If the knowledge that men have obtained of one portion of matter, and a few different arrangements of which it is capable, has produced a great number of arts that make society flourish, and without the help of which life itself would be a burden; what would follow if they could discover all matter? What would follow their knowledge of those other bodies, which now absorb their capacities by their greatness, and escape their experiments by their littleness? What would follow if they could obtain adequate ideas of the various ar rangements of which the parts of bodies infinitely great, and those of bodies infinitely small, are capable? What secrets! what arts! what an infinite source of supplies would that knowledge become?

Now this, my brethren, is the knowledge of the Supreme Being. The Supreme Being knows as perfectly all bodies infinitely great, and all bodies infinitely small, as he knows those bodies between both, which are the objects of human knowledge. The Supreme Being perfectly knows what must result from every different arrangement of the parts of bodies infinitely small; and he perfectly knows what must result from every different arrange ment of the parts of bodies infinitely great. What treasures of plans! what myriads of designs! or, to use the language of my text, what greatness of counsel must this knowledge supply!

But God knows spirits also as perfectly as he knows bodies. If he knows all that must result from the various arrangements of matter, he also knows all that must result from the different modifications of mind. Let us pursue the same method in this article that we have pursued in the former; let us pro

grandeur of God; and although God " dwell- the nature of God; this object is too high for eth in a light which no man can approach us: let us take another method, (and here I unto," 1 Tim. vi. 16; although it is impossi- allege the second proof of the truth of: my text, ble for feeble mortals to have a free access to that is, the history of the world, or as I said him; yet it is pleasing to endeavour to di- before, the history of the church:) let us take, minish the distance that separates them. II say, another method of proving that God, cannot but think, that without presuming too much upon natural reason, any one who habituates himself to consult it, may assure himself of finding sufficient evidence of this truth, that the efficiency of God's will is equal to the extensiveness of his ideas, and by close and necessary consequence, that he is as mighty in work as he is great in counsel.

who is "great in counsel," is also "mighty in work." What counsel can ye imagine too great for God to execute, or which he hath not really executed? Let the most fruitful imagination exert its fertility to the utmost; let it make every possible effort to form plans worthy of an infinite intelligence, it can invent nothing so difficult that God has not realized.

Carry your thoughts back into those periods It should seem, according to our manner of in which the Perfect Being existed alone. reasoning, that greatness of wisdom and sufficiSound reason must allow that he has so existency of power never appear in greater harmony ed. What could then have been the rule or model of beings which should in future exist? The ideas of God were those models. And what could cause those beings that had only an ideal existence in the intelligence of God, actually to exist out of it? The efficiency of his will was the cause. The will of the same Being then, whose ideas had been the exemplars, or models, or the attributes of creatures, caused their existence. The Supreme Being therefore, who is "great in counsel," is "mighty in work."

This being granted, consider now the ocean of God's power, as ye have already considered the greatness of his counsel. God not only knows what motion of your brain will excite such or such an idea in your mind, but he excites or prevents that idea as he pleases, because he produces or prevents that motion of your brain as he pleases. God not only knows what objects will excite certain passions within you, but he excites or diverts those passions as he pleases. God not only knows what projects your passions will produce, when they have gained an ascendency over you, but he inclines you to form, or not to form, such projects, because as it seems best to him, he excites those passions, or he

curbs them.

What we affirm of men, we affirm also of all other intelligent beings: they are no less the objects of the knowledge of God than men, and like them, are equally subject to his efficient will: and hence it is that God knows how to make all fulfil his designs. It is by this that he makes every thing subservient to his glory; Herod and Pilate, our batred and our love, our aversions and our desires; the ten thousand times ten thousand intelligences, some of which are superior to us, and others inferior, all that they are, all that they have, the praises of the blessed and the blasphemies of the damned, all by this mean are instrumental in the execution of his designs, because the determinations of his will are efficient, because to will and to do, to form a plan and to have the power of executing it, is the same thing with the Supreme Being, with him whose ideas were the only models of the attributes of all creatures, as his will was the only cause of their existence.

But perhaps I am falling into what I meant to avoid; perhaps I am bewildering my hearers and myself in speculative labyrinths too intricate for us all. Let us reason then no longer on

in an intelligent being, than when that intelligence produces effects by means, in all appearance, more likely to produce contrary effects. This, we are sure, God has effected, and does effect every day. And, that we may proportion this discourse, not to the extent of my subject, but to the length of these exercises, we will briefly remark, that God has the power of making, I. The deepest afflictions of his children produce their highest happiness. 2. The contrivances of tyrants to oppress the church procure its establishment. 3. The triumphs of Satan turn to the destruction of his empire.

1. God has the power of making the deepest of his children's afflictions produce their highest happiness.

The felicity of the children of God, and, in general, the felicity of all intelligent beings, is founded upon order. All happiness that is not founded upon order, is a violent state, and must needs be of a short duration. But the essence of order, among intelligent beings, is the assigning of that place in their affections to every relative being which is fit for it. Now there is a fitness in having a higher esteem for a being of great excellencies, than for one of small. There is a fitness in my having a higher degree of affection for one from whom I have received more benefits, and from whom I still expect to receive more, than for one from whom I have received, and still hope to receive, fewer. But God is a being of the highest excellence; to God, therefore, I owe the highest degree of esteem. God is the being from whom I have received the most benefits, and from whom I expect to receive the most; consequently to God I owe the highest degree of affectionate gratitude.

Yet, how often do the children of God lose sight of this grand principle? I do not speak only of a few absent moments, in which the power of thought and reflection is, in a manner, gone; nor do I mean only those violent passions which criminal objects excite: I speak of a poison much less sensible, and therefore perhaps much more dangerous. We will give you one example out of many.

Two pious persons enter into the honourable state of marriage on principles of virtue, and compose a family that reveres the Creator by considering him as the only source of all the blessings which they enjoy. Their happiness consists in celebrating the beneficence and perfections of the adorable God, and all their possessions they devote to his glory. He blesses